


Full Circle

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4524975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a disturbing gap in River Song’s canon history, from 1969-1984. What was she doing during all that time? Does anyone really think the Doctor would have left her abandoned like that? What happens to a little girl, caught in the gap between one life, and another? And what happens when it comes full circle? Seven chapters. (Sort of AU as of Angels Take Manhattan)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The following can be calculated from River Song’s time line in cannon: She was raised by the Silence in an orphanage through the sixties. She was sort-of rescued/escaped from this horror by the Doctor and Amy in 1969. She wandered alone for six months until she got to New York and then regenerated... and then what? In the same school and class as Amy, she would have been seven in 1989. Even if, as she said, she’d regenerated as a toddler, that would make her only two or three in 1984. What happened in those missing years, from 1969 to 1984? Living on the streets in New York? In retrospect, do you really think the Doctor would have let that happen? And why, exactly, was Canton Everett Delaware III called to Lake Silencio, when putting his name in the envelopes would have done just as well? Since I do not think Stephen Moffet is going to fill in these gaps, I decided I had to. I named Canton’s husband Stephen, just because his name, I decided, was Stephen. The history of American same-sex marriage is a rocky road, but the dates are accurate, such as they are.
> 
> Oh, and for the sake of this story, please keep in mind, Rules One and Two. The Doctor lies. And River lies, too. Addendum, 30/9/2012. This story has since become something of an Alternate Universe, since Stephen Moffet very kindly dropped Amy and Rory in New York in roughly 1967. However, a. I'm not going to write that reunion because it would be obvious and sappy, and b. this is still a good story, so I'm not taking it down. I'm just shocked he filled in the gap!

“That most certainly is the Doctor,” said the old man. “And he most certainly is dead.” He set the gas can beside the corpse. “He said you’d need this.”   
  
River’s face was tragic as she told Amy and Rory what they had to do. “We’re his friends,” she said. “We do what the Doctor’s friends always do.” She glanced at the old man before making her next statement to Rory. “As we’re told.”   
  
It was River and Rory who lifted the inert body onto the boat, but it was River and the old man who lay the gasoline, while Rory held Amy tightly. She couldn’t bear the smell in her condition, and had to stand far back. The old man gazed at River over the boat. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I know what you were to each other.”   
  
River smiled at him bravely. “There’s a time for everything,” she said evenly. “You know that as well as I do. I always knew this had to happen.” She was much calmer than he’d thought she’d be, given the circumstances. But her next words made perfect sense to him. “ It was time to let him go.”   
  
“I’m proud of you,” he whispered. “I always have been. You’re about to meet me for the first time,” he added. “I’ll have no idea who you are.”   
  
“That’s pretty common with me,” River said with a smile. “I can handle it.”   
  
“Oh, you will,” Canton chuckled. He glanced over at Amy and Rory. “I guess they can’t know, can they.”   
  
River shook her head. “Not yet. Not anything.”   
  
“Am I right in thinking she’s pregnant?” Canton asked.   
  
River nodded.   
  
“Beginning and the end,” he mused. “Birth and death. They always mingle with you, don’t they.”   
  
“It was always hardest on you,” River said gently.  
  
He glanced over at Amy and Rory, finding comfort in each other. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I had Stephen, after all. Who do you have?”   
  
River touched the Doctor’s pale face, her fingertips lingering over his eyes. “Him still,” she said with a smile. “Time is subjective. Particularly between him and me. I’ll see him again. Even you might.”   
  
The old man shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is where it begins, and this is where it ends. He’s told me when it was time for a few other things, too.” He tapped at his chest where his heart still beat. “Counting the minutes.”   
  
River blanched, and she sucked in a breath. “I know,” she said quietly. “But I didn’t know you did. It was cruel of him to tell you.”   
  
He shook his head, a sad smile on his face. “I got to see you one last time,” he said. “There’s nothing cruel about that.”   
  
“Yes there is.”   
  
“You know him. All his greatest gifts are tinged with pain. That’s what makes them precious. Would you have had him any other way?”   
  
River shook her head almost imperceptively.   
  
“Shame he had to die to come full circle.”  
  
“It’s the way it has to be,” River said. “You know how that works.”  
  
“Yes,” he said. “I guess we all do.” 


	2. Belated Beginning

  
  
1969  
  
  
  
“Bye bye, Sweetie!” River cooed. The Doctor kissed her goodbye and watched her as she slid contentedly back into the Stormcage. He was in a very good mood. It had been a very good visit — they were about even on experiences, and there hadn’t been too many secrets to keep. The Doctor knew River found it easier when he already knew they were married.   
  
He set off to go somewhere else, hitting random on the Tardis controls almost sleepily. He slumped into the seat and leaned back grinning. He felt good. River’s scent still permeated his clothes.   
  
Suddenly the Tardis juddered and bucked, throwing the Doctor against the wall. “What the...?” The engines wheezed and the time roter roared in the console. “What are you doing?” the Doctor shouted at the Tardis. “What’s the matter with you?!” He tried to wrestle control back, and got nowhere. Instead a small explosion burned his hand, and a single disgruntled gong sounded from the cloister bell. “Stop it!” the Doctor shouted. “Where are you going?”   
  
The Tardis had no answer for him, and he hadn’t expected one. For something he was symbiotically linked to, she was usually a complete enigma. Rather than try and stop her, he tried to smooth her flight, easing her through the vortex rather than letting her barrel through as haphazardly as she seemed to want to. She was going awfully fast — time clocks whirred as they tried to keep up. “What’s so bloody important?” the Doctor muttered. “The last time you did this, it was Jenny.”  
  
He barely got the last word out before the Tardis banged to a stop. Smoke billowed from the console, and a tiny flame flickered where the explosion had lit. The Doctor blew it out like a birthday candle and checked the time clock — the clock had stuck somewhere between the twentieth and the twenty-first century, but the actual date was a blur. At least the location was clear. Earth, New York City. Well, that narrowed it down a bit. He debated just flying away now that the Tardis seemed to have settled down, but she seemed tired after her mad flight, and there was something here she wanted him to see.   
  
The Doctor checked his sonic screwdriver and poked his head out of the Tardis. He was in a dingy back alley which told him nothing about the date — anywhere after 1937, judging by the shape of the street lamp he could see in the distance. Otherwise, dingy back alleys looked pretty much the same the universe over. It was uncomfortably cold.   
  
Just as he stepped out, someone screamed. “Hello, yes?” the Doctor said, turning to the voice. A homeless man was backed against the wall in terror.   
  
“What the hell is it with you all tonight?” he cried out. Clearly he’d seen the Tardis materialize. “Where did you come from? Are you dying too?”   
  
“What?” The Doctor stepped up to him, but he cringed away.  
  
“That’s it! I’ll never take it again, I swear!” he shouted, and he bolted past the Tardis and away down the alley.   
  
“What are you talking about?” the Doctor called after him, but a sudden jolt of energy stopped him in his tracks. His head flickered, searching left and right for the source of it, sniffing as if he could identify it by scent. It wasn’t psychic energy, but it wasn’t truly physical, either. It seemed like bioenergy, but bioenergy was a wildly volatile substance, and he only knew of a few species in the universe which ever used or emitted it. Sycorax, Tragine, and....  
  
A puff of disconnected golden light down the alley blew all speculation out of the Doctor’s head. He pelted down the pavement in a flurry of panic, already half suspecting what he’d find.  
  
She was lying in a pile of half full garbage bags, using their decomposing contents for heat. She was filthy, and dressed in rags that did not fit her. It was hard to tell her physical age. She looked somewhere between five and seven — younger than he’d expected, but she’d been under a lot of stress. Her face was different. Unhealthy dark smudges ringed her eyes. Her hair had gone as wildly ginger as Amy’s, and her skin was so pale she was almost blue. Though that might have been the cold.   
  
He recognized her immediately. As he watched she coughed again, another cloud of regeneration energy blowing from her mouth like mist. “River!” the Doctor breathed, and he fell to his knees by her side.  
  
Her eyes were closed from exhaustion, and she was freezing to the touch. The regeneration was going badly. She’d been starving to death and half frozen when her last body had finally given up. The new body was stronger, but it was still weak, and it was still cold out. If he didn’t get her somewhere warm and safe and get some food into her, she’d be regenerating again before the night was out. Regeneration was a delicate business — he’d had enough regenerations go bad to know that from personal experience. He didn’t know what two regenerations in quick succession would do to her. He knew such a thing had a fifty-fifty chance of killing a Time Lord. River was human, and regenerating as child — she’d probably never survive it. Spoilers or no, he had to get her out of there.   
  
She grunted when he tried to sit her up, but she was weaker than a newborn kitten, and all she could do was move her arms uselessly. “They said it was easy,” she mumbled, half conscious. “Dying wasn’t s’posed to hurt....”  
  
The words were like knives. He scooped the child up and held her tightly, carrying her back to the Tardis. He snapped his fingers, but the doors wouldn’t open. Stupid sound-bio implant. He should never have installed it. He fumbled the key out of his pocket and pushed it into the lock.   
  
It wouldn’t turn. He tried again, balancing the freezing child on his hip. And then the Tardis said something to him, in her wordless, alien psy-communication. One concept. _No._  
  
“Damn you! Let me in! She’ll die out here!”   
  
_No._  
  
He beat on the door with his closed fist, but she was not letting him in. The Tardis had very specific plans for River, and they didn’t involve her lifeline being altered by being whisked away in the Tardis before her time. “ _Stu_ pid, _wret_ ched ma _chine!_ ” he cursed the Tardis. “You couldn’t have brought me here after Demons Run, let me bring her to Amy and Rory, oh, no! You just had to play your little history games and drive me utterly _mad!_ ”   
  
The Tardis was not going to listen to his ranting. All hint of psy-communication cut off, like a phone line going dead.   
  
“Gah!” the Doctor shouted, and River moaned in his arms. Her head lolled backwards and all hint of consciousness left her. A tiny trickle of regeneration energy leaked from her mouth and nose, like blood.   
  
The Doctor pulled her tightly to him, wracking his brains for where humans went when they needed help in 1969. They were in inner city New York. From what he understood, they usually just died in the streets. Clearly, River already had, once. This little girl was going to die for a second time any minute if he didn’t get her somewhere warm. Amy and Rory would never forgive him! Forget that. He’d never forgive himself. His history would change around him, and his Tardis was being stubborn, and he couldn’t help his own wife. He was the Doctor for time’s sake!   
  
A doctor. A hospital. That would do. He tucked River’s face into his neck and whispered to her. “It’s okay, love. We’ll get you safe.” He staggered into the street, looking left and right for a car he could sonic into working, a phone where he could call a hospital, something. A bright white sign down the street grabbed his attention. “Mission.”   
  
He usually hated missionaries on principal — nothing brought more pain and suffering than when one religion tried to tell another religion that it was wrong — but when it came to inner city New York, that was probably the kindest place he could find.  
  
His arms were too full to reach the handle. He kicked at the door in desperation until someone opened it for him. “Let us in,” he begged. “Please, just let us in.” He pushed passed the uniformed mission worker, located the heat vent, and dragged himself to it.   
  
“Is she all right?” the mission worker asked. She was middle aged, with that vacant benign expression so many mission workers wore, but she clearly meant well.  
  
“Yes, she’s fine, she just died earlier this evening,” said the Doctor. “Do you have a blanket so we can warm her up so she won’t die a second time? Because if she does, then I died a lifetime ago in a library, and it’ll create a space-time paradox and rip a hole in the universe. Again.”   
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” the Doctor said. “I’m completely barmy. Can I have a blanket, please?”  
  
The mission worker went into the back room and came out a moment later with a wool army blanket, a cup of coffee and a large bowl of canned chicken noodle soup. She knew her work, whatever else she did. The Doctor curled up on the floor with the child in his arms, the heat vent going full on her, trying to massage life back into her. Eventually the blue color faded from her skin, and her unconsciousness seemed to pass from a weakened faint into actual sleep. She stirred and hummed, snuggling close to him for warmth, but she did not awaken. Probably just as well, the Doctor realized. The Tardis was right, after all. This was quite the paradox already.   
  
“Yes, she came in with this man,” he heard the mission worker saying from the other room. She was on the phone with someone. “No, I don’t think he’s her father. He’s quite mad. — No, no, harmless, I think, but quite mad. — She looks a bit like that girl we’ve been feeding at the back door, the one we told you about. The one we couldn’t catch. — Well, her clothes are the same, but her hair’s different. — I suppose she could have been wearing a wig before, we never really got a close look at her. — I know you have a hard time finding beds, but — This is an emergency! She was frozen and filthy. She’s clearly homeless. Probably a runaway. Maybe an orphan. — Well, I suppose she’s safe enough tonight. I’ll keep an eye on the man, make sure he doesn’t do anything to her. — All right. But we aren’t the social services, this really isn’t our job. — I just want to make sure to get her into the system, make sure she’s safe.”   
  
The Doctor sighed. He couldn’t stay here. And now he had a deadline. The foster care services would be here by morning — and once she was back in the system, the Silence would be on her in a heartbeat. Damn the Tardis!   
  
He needed help, that was clear. But who did he know in 1969? Well, hundreds of people, but not a lot who knew him in this face, and even fewer who could be here by morning. Barbara and Ian would help a child, but his memories of them were dim, and they’d never known him in this body. The Brigadier would help, but he was hours away by plane, and he wasn’t much for children. Oh, River. Poor River. Her little child’s voice over the phone lines at the White House, _Help me. Please, help me!_  
  
The White House. The answer was obvious, and he felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. He curled River — Melody. He supposed he had to call her Melody right now — he curled Melody around the vent with his jacket under her head and the blanket tucked around her securely. He kissed her forehead and went up to the mission office. “Excuse me, could I use your phone? I need to call the girl’s father.”   
  
“Her father?”   
  
“She’s a lost child, stolen by her abusive grandmother, and I was the private eye who was hired to track her down.” He pulled out his psychic paper and pushed it in the missionary’s face before grabbing the phone and dialing. He had to argue with the operator for a good ten minutes before she would connect him to the right number.   
  
“Canton! Hi, it’s the Doctor. Get your husband and come to New York, _right now._ ”  
  
“Did you say husband?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“How did you know about Stephen? I never mentioned him. And why did you call him my husband?”  
  
“River and I were at your wedding anniversary last year in ‘94. Get in the car _right now._ You can get to New York from D.C. in a night, right?”   
  
“Yes, but why—”  
  
“ _Right now!_ ” the Doctor repeated. “Tell Stephen I have his daughter.” He gave Canton the address of the mission and hung up.   
  
He shook his head. He’d wondered why River was so keen on going to Canton and Stephen’s tenth wedding anniversary. Stephen in particular had gone on and on about that daughter of theirs — The one so brilliant at mathematics. The one who went to college in Britain. The one who never called anymore.   
  
River was much better at keeping those spoilers secrets than the Doctor ever was. 


	3. Too Much Information

  
Canton Everett Delaware III was just as cool and calm and befuddled as he always was around the Doctor. “Explain this, Doctor,” he said as he pushed his way into the mission. “Whose daughter.”   
  
“Yours,” said the Doctor. “Stephen’s always wanted children, right?”  
  
“Well, yes, but—”   
  
Canton was cut off as Stephen came in behind him. His hair was in an Afro and a purple silk scarf was tossed artistically around his neck. “ _What_ is that child doing on the floor?” Stephen asked sharply. He strode forward and turned on the mission worker, who had just come out of her office. “What are you doing, letting a little girl like that lay on the floor! Don’t you have a cot back there or something?”   
  
“I—”  
  
“Well, go and get it, Lady. Your god is watching!” Stephen’s voice sounded like it was coming from the center of a gospel choir. The woman turned and fled.  
  
The Doctor grinned. He finally realized where River got some of her more flamboyant tendencies. He approved. “Did you tell him?” the Doctor asked Canton.   
  
“Of course not!” Canton hissed. “I don’t want to dash his hopes. They won’t allow homosexuals to adopt children any more than they’ll allow us to work in government! I’m not about to—”  
  
“Stephen!” the Doctor called. “Nice to see you again.”  
  
“Who are you, boyo?” Stephen said, turning his attention to the Doctor. “We’ve sure never met before.”  
  
“Oh, we will.”  
  
Stephen looked to Canton. “Who is this nut job?”   
  
“A friend of mine,” Canton admitted. “Kind of.”   
  
“What kind of _friend_?” Stephen asked suspiciously.   
  
“Strictly business,” Canton said hurriedly.   
  
“Too bad. He’s cute.”   
  
“Thank you,” the Doctor said. He grabbed Stephen by the arm and introduced him to the sleeping River with a flourish of his hand. “Stephen. Meet Melody. She’s homeless and in need of love. She’s your daughter, if you’d like.”   
  
Stephen’s expressive face softened considerably. “Don’t you tease me, man,” he said huskily. “That’s just no fair.”   
  
“I’m not teasing you,” the Doctor said earnestly. “I need this little girl safe and loved, and I can’t do it myself.”  
  
“Where are her parents?” Stephen asked.   
  
“They haven’t been born yet. She needs some fathers. You need a daughter. Sounds like a perfect match to me.” He clapped his hands together and stepped back. “All yours. I’ll have the custody papers in your mailbox by the time you get home.” He turned to Canton. “I had to tell the good witch of the North back there that you were her father,” he said to him. “The race thing would bother her. Stick to the story, that lady’s too stupid to question it, but you’ll need to get Melody out of here fast before the social services get here, and I need to leave before she wakes up. Excuse me!”  
  
Canton blinked, barely following the Doctor’s accelerated infodump. The Doctor was out the door before Canton had fully processed everything he was saying, but Canton lunged after him a second later. “No you don’t, Doctor! You don’t just call me up in the middle of the night and drop a kid in my lap without an explanation!”  
  
The Doctor turned on the sidewalk. “Doesn’t Stephen want kids?”  
  
“Of course he does, but this doesn’t make sense. Who is she?”   
  
The Doctor stepped close and took hold of Canton’s shoulder. “If I tell you, you can never say anything about it, not to Stephen, not to her, not even to me if you see me again. That’s a terrible burden for any man to bear. Are you sure you want to know?”   
  
“Doctor. I was in the FBI. I know how to keep secrets.”   
  
“Do you really?”   
  
Canton cocked his head. “I never mentioned you to Stephen, did I?”   
  
“Good point,” the Doctor said. He turned and directed Canton’s gaze through the window at the child. He’d clearly gotten out just in time. Melody was awake, sitting up against the wall, and Stephen was smoothing her hair. “Look at her. Does she remind you of anybody?”   
  
Canton shook his head.   
  
“Look harder. Who do you see?”  
  
“A child. Just a child. Am I supposed to know her?”   
  
“You’ve met before,” the Doctor said. “Admittedly, she was wearing a space suit at the time.”   
  
Canton’s eyes opened wide. “That’s her? She’s too young.”   
  
“She’s changed. She does that.”   
  
“But didn’t she _rip through_ that space suit?”  
  
“Yes. You’ll have a very precocious child on your hands. You can handle that, can’t you?”   
  
Canton stared at her through the glass. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice held no inflection.  
  
The Doctor nodded. His hesitation actually spoke well for his suitability. But he couldn’t leave things to chance. “Are you going to go in there and tell Stephen no?”   
  
“You’re cruel.”  
  
“I’m desperate.”   
  
Canton turned to look at him. “Why can’t you look after her yourself?”   
  
The Doctor turned away, rubbing his eyes. “I would,” he said. “But I can’t.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“She’s my wife.”   
  
Canton blinked again, opened his mouth, and then closed it with an audible snap. His brow furrowed for a moment, and then his eyes opened wide in shock. “That’s River?”  
  
“Who said anything about that being River?” the Doctor said, flustered. “Who said River was my wife? I never said that.”  
  
“I saw you two together,” Canton said dismissively. “It was obvious. She grows up to be River Song?”   
  
“Not for a long time,” the Doctor said quietly.  
  
Canton turned back to look at her with a new look in his eyes. It was pride. “She’s River Song.”   
  
He’d hooked him. Canton was in. “There you go. Enjoy,” the Doctor said.   
  
“I raised River Song,” Canton muttered, a strange smile on his face. The Doctor was sidling backwards, trying to escape before Canton had broken out of his spell. He wasn’t fast enough. “Wait.”   
  
The Doctor wanted out of there, but he waited. It was the least he could do.  
  
“Who is she? Where did she come from? How did those... things...” he shook his head, trying to remember something that didn’t want to be remembered. “How did she get in that spacesuit?”   
  
“It’s a long story. She was kidnapped as a baby and raised here. And she needs a family!”  
  
“But if she was kidnapped, it’s not fair. She needs to go back to her parents.”   
  
“No,” the Doctor readily agreed. “It’s not fair. But her parents haven’t been born yet, and she’s all alone.”  
  
“Who were her parents?”   
  
The Doctor looked at him. “You’re asking?”   
  
Canton’s face cleared. “Amy and Rory.” It wasn’t even a question.   
  
The Doctor nodded.   
  
“Oh, God!” Canton held his hands over his face for a moment, trying to take it all in. He frowned. “Did you know all this, before, when we were...?”  
  
“River did. I didn’t. Neither did her parents. But she had to know how things would turn out, because they’d already turned out that way. It’s called a predestination paradox, and I hate them, but they happen all the time with her and me, and she knows how to keep her mouth shut.” The Doctor paused. “And now you need to keep your mouth shut, too.”  
  
Canton nodded. “I can do that. This is a matter of National Security, after all.”   
  
“Universal Security, but close enough,” the Doctor muttered. He turned to leave, and then paused. It wasn’t fair. He had to warn him. He turned back. “Look. Something else you’ll need to know. Something else Stephen can’t know.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Sometime in the 1980s, she’ll leave you. I don’t exactly know why. I don’t know when you’ll see her again. Well, in ‘94 at your wedding anniversary, but other than that....”  
  
“There you go again,” Canton said. “We can’t get married.”   
  
“Move to Berkley,” the Doctor said, just as dismissive as Canton had been earlier. “Early eighties. Or as close as you can get to marriage until Massachusetts, 2004, but you can call it whatever you want, long slog, but you’ll get there. Anyway. Mid eighties, she’ll go. She’s going to her parents, and she’ll be fine. She’ll be amazing. But you have to be ready to let her go.”   
  
Canton blinked. “Stephen won’t be.”   
  
“He’ll think she’s going to college.”   
  
Canton nodded. “I can probably sell that,” he said, but he looked sad. “Anything else I should know?”  
  
“I suggest home schooling,” the Doctor said. “She should stay out of the system as much as possible, because _they_ are looking for her. Keep checking your hand.” Canton looked down at his palm where the message bee was still imbedded. He sucked in a breath and nodded. “She probably won’t get on well with other kids, and she’s too clever for words. Otherwise... just love her. She needs love.”   
  
Canton nodded.   
  
The Doctor looked at him seriously. “You know everything I do, now. Can you handle this?”  
  
“I hope so,” Canton said evenly. “We’ll see, won’t we.”   
  
The Doctor nodded. “I owe you one,” the Doctor said. “A big one.”  
  
“Berkley, early eighties?” Canton asked.   
  
“Around then,” the Doctor said. “Domestic Partnership laws start actually applying.”  
  
Canton’s eyes were shining. “You let me know that,” he said. “You’ve already paid.” He turned away and wiped eyes which were not tearing. Not at all.   
  
The Doctor hugged him fiercely, which surprised both of them, and then literally ran off down the nearest alley. Canton turned back to the window and saw why. Melody was sitting in Stephen’s lap, and he was teaching her the itsy bitsy spider. It was probably the sweetest thing Canton had ever seen in his life. And the Doctor and the Ponds had to miss it. Canton smiled. But he would see it. He would get to be there for all of it. A husband — eventually — and a daughter he was already insanely proud of. The Doctor had given him the greatest gift he could possibly have given him.   
  
With promises and tangled timelines, the Doctor had given Canton a family.   



	4. What Scares Us Most

  
Melody Delaware — called DeeDee, by her fathers — took careful aim and fired. A perfect pattern appeared on the man shaped target — five to the heart, three to the head. Little designs in geometric patterns. Melody blew the top of her Browning 9mm., twirled it like a movie gunslinger, and turned to look at her dad. “Getting better?” she asked.   
  
Canton looked at his fifteen year old daughter. She was tall and slim and developing curves that frightened him. In his head he still remembered her as three and a half feet tall with pigtails and chipmunk cheeks. Now she was a young woman, growing more to resemble his memory of Amy Pond by the day. “Yeah,” he said evenly. “Not bad. Your stance is still off — you keep losing that 45 degree angle, and your balance is suffering because of it.”   
  
Melody sighed and shot two more bullets at the target sheet without even looking at it. Two perfect, unblinking eyes appeared in the target’s head. She raised an eyebrow. Canton couldn’t help but smile. “Okay, you’re doing great. You surpassed me two years ago. Quit showing off.” He pulled the earmuffs off Melody’s head and took the gun from her. “Lets go home. Stephen’s making chile.”  
  
“Did you tell him where we were?”   
  
Canton shook his head.   
  
“Can _ton!_ ” Melody said. “I wish you’d just tell him. He doesn’t like you keeping secrets.”  
  
“He doesn’t approve of me teaching you to shoot,” Canton said. “You know that. He thinks you’re too violent already.”   
  
“It’s what I’m good at.”   
  
“It’s not the _only_ thing you’re good at,” Canton said. “I just think shooting at targets is better than shooting up the local water tower — and don’t tell me that wasn’t you.”   
  
Melody huffed. “Stephen grounded me. I was bored.”   
  
“And you snuck out,” Canton said.   
  
“The door was locked. How could I resist?”   
  
Canton shook his head. “I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t rob a bank.”   
  
“What would I ever do with money?” Melody asked innocently.   
  
Canton sighed, exasperated.   
  
“I love the range,” Melody said. “Can’t you tell him that?”  
  
Canton shook his head. “There are some things he can’t know, Dee. You know that, too.”   
  
Melody sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck yet?” she asked.   
  
Canton grunted in annoyance. Why did she have to bring this up, again, now? Canton shook his head no, and Melody scuffed her foot against the ground before she looked up fiercely. “Race you to the car!”   
  
Canton didn’t even try to keep up. She’d been able to outrun him since she was twelve years old — and Canton ran every day to keep fit. By the time he got to the car, Melody was already sitting in the passenger seat. Canton did not point out that he still had the keys in his pocket — he checked. Yes. He did. Sometimes she just filtched the keys. Sometimes she picked the lock. Sometimes she pulled the lock from the window. She seemed to find it amusing to break into his car. Sometimes she even had it running for him when he got there, but she’d decided not to hot wire it this evening. She seemed pensive as he drove home, not chattering or laughing. She was looking up at the stars. He hated it when she did that. They were in for a rough night.   
  
“You okay, Dee?” he asked. Canton wasn’t very good at expressing his concerns. He wasn’t as emotionally available as Stephen, and it bothered him that he couldn’t always reach out as much as he wanted to DeeDee.   
  
Melody nodded without saying anything. Then she looked over at him. “You are actually looking, aren’t you? You’re not just lying to me.”   
  
“DeeDee! I don’t lie to you.”   
  
“You keep secrets,” she pointed out.   
  
“That’s not lying.”   
  
“Tell that to Daddy.”  
  
Canton gripped the steering wheel. “You know why we can’t tell Stephen,” Canton said. “You’ve known that from the first day — and don’t pretend you were just five and didn’t understand. Ordinary five year olds don’t use words like amniocentesis, and particularly not in regards to their own gestation!”  
  
“They called her Amy! I heard them!”   
  
“I know they called her Amy!” Canton snapped. “I know your mother was Amy Pond, I just can’t find her! Do you think it’s easy to get accurate records of the whole of England? I’m looking, okay? I just haven’t found them yet! I don’t even know when they were born.”   
  
Melody sighed and looked back out at the stars.   
  
“Why are you so anxious for me to find your parents, anyway?” Canton asked, the question he’d been avoiding asking her for the last three years, ever since she’d asked him to help her search. “Is it that bad, having us as your dads?” Melody didn’t answer, and Canton sighed. “I know you’re not happy about the move—”  
  
“I don’t care where we live,” Melody said glumly. “New York, D.C., California, it’s all the same to me. I didn’t belong in D.C. any more than I belong here.”  
  
Canton tried to take a calm breath and figure out what to say to her, but it was hard. Melody was brilliant at everything except interpersonal relationships, and it was the one area Canton found difficult, himself. Stephen understood her better. But he understood her because he didn’t understand her at all. He didn’t know about the little quantum physics toys she made, or the extremely complex equations she could work out in her head, or the notebooks of alien races she’d drawn up, or the fact that she could remember being born. Or how often Canton bailed her out of jail for various and sundry misdemeanors, either. Stephen didn’t know about president Nixon and the space suit. He didn’t know about the space men. He didn’t even know about the Doctor — Canton had never mentioned him by name. When he talked about the man who had brought Melody, Canton said he didn’t know his name — which was true enough — and simply referred to him as his friend. Melody didn’t know that was the Doctor, either. She was right. Canton did keep secrets. He kept a lot of them.   
  
It was also 1980. He was already keeping one big secret, one that was eating at him every day. How long did he have left with her? It bothered him, knowing that she was already so keen to leave. Their beginning had been a strange one, and their relationship was a strained one, what with all the secrets that weighed on them both. She was dangerous and volatile and completely uncontainable. But she was his daughter for all that. At least, he thought of her as such. But with her so desperate to find her parents, he sometimes wondered if she actually thought of him and Stephen as her fathers. The idea pained him. What if she was just marking time until she could get away...?  
  
They’d made it home before Canton figured out what he wanted to say to her.   
  
Stephen, of course, was a warm hug, even before he came into the room. His presence in the house made everything sweeter. “Where’s my favorite girl?” he asked as Melody came in. He pounced on her, squeezing her tightly before sending her upstairs to wash her hands for dinner.   
  
After dinner, Melody went up to her room, and didn’t come down even when Stephen told her it was time for M*A*S*H to come on. Both Stephen and Canton knew what to expect that night. They held on to each other in the dark, only dozing until the time came.   
  
Melody’s screams started about twelve-thirty, and the two men blinked fully awake, wrapped themselves in robes, and duly went into her room to wake her from her nightmares. It was Canton’s job to wake her, since with his FBI training he was less likely to be hit. (Even so, she’d broken his collarbone once.) It was Stephen’s job to comfort her afterward.  
  
“Help me!” Melody shouted. “Let me out! Let me _out!_ ”  
  
It was one of the bad ones. The ones where she was just scared that it was coming for her were comparatively easy. Canton and Stephen came for her instead, and she would wake quickly and shudder herself back to sleep after twenty minutes. The ones where she was actually trapped were harder to pull her out of. Canton grabbed both of her arms and wrestled her still as she shouted and cried out. “No! No!”   
  
“DeeDee!” Canton said. “Come on, girl, come out of it. Come back now.”   
  
“Let me out! I can’t get out! Help me!”   
  
“Come on, DeeDee, please, just open your eyes.”  
  
“There’s no way out!”   
  
“There’s always a way out! Just open your eyes. Come on, Dee. You’re here with us, come on.”  
  
It took a good ten minutes to shake her from the night terror. When Melody finally screamed her eyes open she stared unseeing at Canton’s face for a long moment. Then she shuddered, and sobbed, one of her tearless sobs of relief. Now it was Stephen’s turn. He slid past Canton and snuggled onto the bed beside her, wrapping his arm around her and tucking her head under his chin. “Oh, sweetie. Poor baby. You wanna tell me about it?”   
  
“Not tonight, Daddy,” Melody whispered, and she wrapped her arms around him.   
  
“Okay,” Stephen said. He started to sing, one of his favorites that he lip-synced at the bar when he was in his more flamboyantly gay moods. He gently rocked her back and forth. “ _At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side._ ”   
  
Canton looked on at them, and finally left them to it. It was their private time, and he knew he shouldn’t interfere. Stephen was the only thing in DeeDee’s life which was pure, untainted by unwanted knowledge or inexplicable abilities. He went downstairs and poured himself a glass of milk, hoping it would calm him down enough to help him sleep. Trouble was, what he really wanted was coffee. Or bourbon. He rinsed the glass and went back upstairs in time to hear Stephen softly crooning, “ _I will survive. Hey, hey._ ”  
  
“I’m okay. You can go, Daddy,” Melody murmured in the darkness.   
  
“You sure, sweetie?”  
  
“Yeah. I know there’s no monsters. I’m getting too old for this.”   
  
“You’re never too old for hugs,” Stephen said. “But okay.” Canton heard Stephen get up from the bed and kiss her cheek. “Go to sleep, sweetie. We’re here if you need us.”   
  
“I know. Night.”   
  
“Sleep tight.”  
  
Stephen slipped out the door and started when he saw Canton. “Oh, I thought you were in bed, honey!” he said. He kissed Canton tenderly and headed for the bathroom. “See you in a bit.”   
  
Canton made a move toward their bedroom, but Melody’s voice carried over the darkness. “Tonton?”  
  
Canton peered into Melody’s room. She hadn’t called him Tonton in three years. Shortly after she’d come to live with them, back when she was still small, Stephen had become Daddy and Canton had become Tonton. But Tonton had slipped into disuse after she started puberty. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. “What is it, Dee?”   
  
Her pale face shone like a moon in the light from the hall, and he slipped inside, closing the door behind him. “I’m scared.”  
  
“You want me to get Stephen?”   
  
“No. Not of monsters or spacemen. They’re not... real. Or they’re not here. He can help with those.”  
  
Canton came forward in the dim light and perched on the edge of Melody’s bed. “What, then? What are you scared of?”  
  
There was a long silence. Canton just waited, not pressing her, not asking. Finally, Melody opened her mouth.   
  
“Me.”   
  
Canton sat in silence for another long moment. Finally he nodded. “I can see that,” he said finally. “But you don’t frighten me. You’re my daughter.”   
  
“No I’m not,” Melody whispered.   
  
Canton sucked in a breath, knowing it would come to this. “DeeDee... Melody. I know it’s hard when you want someone... when you want a family that you think....”  
  
“I don’t want them,” Melody said suddenly. “Is that what you think?”  
  
Canton frowned. “Then what...?”  
  
“You know why I want you to find them?” she asked. “You know why I keep asking, why I keep insisting?”  
  
Canton shook his head.   
  
“Because I _hate_ them!” Melody hissed. She suddenly sobbed. “Why’d they abandon me? What did I do? What’s wrong with me that they didn’t want me? Why’d they hate me so much?”  
  
“They didn’t hate you.”  
  
“Amy tried to kill me!”   
  
“Oh, Dee!” Canton reached forward and pulled her to him, his arm around her thin shoulders. He breathed in the sweat soaked smell of her hair. “I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “I really don’t. I don’t know what happened with that gun or what was going on with the space suit. It’s impossible to remember most of it, and the rest doesn’t make any sense. But I know that they don’t hate you.” He kissed her forehead. “How could anyone hate my angel?”   
  
“Who’s the man in the bow tie?”   
  
Canton pulled away at the sudden question and stared at her. He couldn’t read her expression in the dim light. “What?”  
  
“The man in the bow tie,” she insisted. She’d never asked this before. “The man with Amy. The man with the cot. Who is he?”   
  
“I don’t know about any cot...” Canton said, thinking of the kind of army cots they used in America.   
  
“The cradle, with the stars. And that smile and that silly bow tie, who is he?” she insisted. “I keep dreaming about him.”  
  
Canton blinked at her, trying to figure out what he should say. But in the end, he’d never lied to her. He avoided the truth and misdirected questions, but he’d never outright lied. Her question was too direct. “That’s the Doctor.”   
  
Melody stared up at him. “The _Doctor...._ ”   
  
Her voice held a sudden heat that bothered him. It wasn’t exactly sexual, but it was too powerful for a girl her age. “You’re too young to think about that,” he said darkly.   
  
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Melody said. “I dream about space men and my mother screaming and a woman with an eyepatch and that man with that stupid bow tie. And they’re memories, and they scare me. And it makes me want to kill something, and that scares me, too.” Melody shook her head. “Tonton I... I don’t like what’s in my head. I’m starting to put it together, and I wish I hadn’t. No one else can remember the kinds of things I remember. Things happened when I was little — _really_ little. Important things. They didn’t always make sense, but as I get older... I’m putting words to things, and names to things. The Last Centurion, and how to be brave, and stars... the first stars. I’m putting meanings to words I couldn’t understand from the very day I was born. And I don’t understand why I can do that. What _am I?_ ”  
  
“You’re our daughter,” Canton said without missing a beat.   
  
“But I don’t think I’m human!” Her voice throbbed with desperation. “I don’t fit! I’m out of place — so out of place I could just explode. And I feel like I need to find them, my mother and my father and the man with the bow tie. Until I find them, I’m never going to fit.” She trembled, her hands clenched into fists. “And I’m afraid I’m going to do something... something terrible.”  
  
Canton regarded her for a long moment. “How old are you, now? Fifteen?”  
  
“More or less,” Melody muttered.   
  
“You know, I was about your age when I knew I wasn’t going to fit, either,” Canton said. “I mean you grew up with us, so we’re normal to you, but you have eyes in your head. You know what people think of us.”   
  
Melody nodded. Having “faggot” spray painted on your garage was a pretty unambiguous signal. The persecution was one of the reasons they had left D.C.   
  
“Well, the thing is, I used to think it too. I fought myself for a really long time. And when I was about fifteen I finally realized that everything that was different wasn’t just going to go away. That I _was_ different, and nothing was going to change that.” Melody’s eyes were so hungry, so desperate. He needed to reach out to her. “You want to know what it is to be scared of yourself? I had a life I wanted, and being different was going to kill that. I was so scared of who I was, that I took my father’s gun and was about to blow a hole through my own head.”  
  
Melody stared at him. “You never told me that.”   
  
“I never told anyone that,” Canton said. “But you know why I didn’t go through with it?”  
  
She shook her head.   
  
“Because the fact that I was willing to scared me even more. It wasn’t the thought of dying — I’ve never been scared of that. It was the idea that I was willing to just go and do it. That I could do something so terrible, so easily. Take a son away from my mother, make my father blame himself for my death. I was willing to torture the people I loved.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to be who I knew I was. But I didn’t want to be _that_ , either. And I realized I did have a choice. Not the choice I thought I had — of forcing myself to be normal. But I did have the choice of what I was going to become, given the pieces of myself I had on hand. I could assemble them any way I wanted.”  
  
He reached out and took Melody’s hand, opening her fist until she relaxed. Her hand had grown so large. He remembered it being so small in his. “Now, you have some very unique pieces in your head. I’m not going to pretend that isn’t true. But I know what it is to feel like you don’t belong. That you don’t fit. That no one will ever accept you.” He flashed a rueful smile. “That you might do something terrible. But finding your parents isn’t going to fix that. You can only do that by finding yourself. By finding all the pieces, and putting them together into who _you_ want to be.”   
  
He squeezed her hand and stared at her in the dim light. “And you will find yourself. I know you will. I have no doubts whatsoever that you will walk through life with no more questions about what to do, or who you are. You will be one of the most amazing people in the universe — and I’d say that even if I knew nothing about you, but only what I could see now. But a mountain that high is a long climb. It’s going to take time. And before you get there, before you reach that summit, you need to know that it doesn’t matter. We _do_ accept you. Stephen and I. You’re our daughter. And it doesn’t matter where you came from, or what you do, or what you remember, we are going to love you until the day you die.” He glared at her. “So put that in your gun, and shoot it!” he said with exaggerated annoyance.   
  
She laughed. She reached up and hugged him. “I love you, Tonton.”   
  
“I love you too, Melody,” he said. He chuckled. And he’d been struggling so hard this evening to figure out how to express himself. How silly. That was all he really needed to say. He wondered why it had been so hard to remember that. 


	5. Ready or Not

  
1984   
  
Canton caught the title of the book on Melody’s table and chuckled. This was the first year that the book was proven false. 1984, and Big Brother wasn’t everywhere. Not yet, anyway. Melody followed his gaze. “Yeah, we’re dissecting it for English 101. Bloody boring.”   
  
“Well, if you hadn’t botched your SATs.”   
  
“The math was elementary, and the English was a joke,” Melody said.   
  
“Well, if you’re going to go to college, they rate your opening classes on your SAT scores. Yours weren’t great.”   
  
“I was busy.”   
  
“Seducing the examiner as I recall.”  
  
“Well, she was cute,” Melody said, and turned back to her kitchenette. The New York cubbyhole was laughably called an apartment, and cost an arm and a leg, but it left Melody more freedom than the college dorms would have given her. “Orwell got it wrong!”   
  
“Yes, he did,” Canton said easily, “but he wasn’t trying to predict the future. He was trying to show how a society could change within a short space of time to a given extreme.”  
  
“I know, I know,” Melody said. “We are studying the silly thing.” She handed Canton a coke. “Thanks for coming.”   
  
“I was in the area.” He was lying, but his current job in private security gave him a lot of leeway, and when Melody called from college saying she had something she wanted to talk to him about, he went. Instantly.  
  
“How’s Stephen?”   
  
“He misses you. He still wishes you’d gone to Berkley instead of NYU.”  
  
“I know.” She sat down at the table and gazed at him. “I’m still not sure why you went to bat for me on that.”   
  
Canton shrugged. “It was time to let you go.”  
  
He was actually surprised to have in fact found her at the New York apartment she had said she was going to. He’d thought, when she’d been accepted into NYU — _Well. This is it._ But she’d kept being available, and was exactly where she said she’d be. He kept hoping the Doctor had gotten it wrong... but he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.   
  
“All right. I’m here, seated, and given refreshments. What’s your news?”   
  
She licked her lips and then raised her eyes to him. “I’ve found them.”  
  
Canton closed his eyes and sighed. Here it was. She was leaving.   
  
“Or, I’ve found her, at least,” Melody continued. “She was born in ‘82.”  
  
“How did you find her? I’ve been looking everywhere, and there’s nothing, not in the whole English census.” He leaned forward earnestly. “And I have been looking. It wasn’t a lie. How could you find her when I couldn’t?”   
  
“NYU has a great computer lab. Internet’s being invented,” Melody said. “The database isn’t as impressive as it will get, if my history lessons are accurate, but things are starting to get typed into the system.”   
  
“How can you have history lessons on things that haven’t happened yet?”  
  
Melody looked a little helpless. “I can’t remember.”   
  
Canton nodded. “Of course.”   
  
“Anyway, it’s easy to rig the system once the system is in place.”   
  
Canton nodded, disgruntled. “I was trying.”   
  
“Don’t blame yourself. I only found her by chance. She was born in Scotland, under the name Amelia. That’s why we couldn’t find her.”   
  
“Are you sure it’s her?”   
  
She nodded. “I’m sure.”   
  
Canton took a deep breath. “So when are you leaving?”  
  
“Leaving?”   
  
“For Scotland.”   
  
“Why would I go there?”   
  
Canton was actually shocked. “To find your parents.”   
  
“I’m not sure where she’s living, exactly. Besides.” She reached forward and took his hand. “I have my parents.”  
  
“Dee. You’ve been looking for her forever.”   
  
Melody looked a little uncomfortable. “I know. But, really. I have a good life here. I’m enjoying myself. I kind of like New York. And what am I going to do with her if I find her? She’s two! What’s she going to do, show me her favorite Sesame Street episode?” She squeezed Canton’s hand playfully. “I don’t need her. I’m enjoying college, and love you two. Maybe when she’s older... who knows. Until then... I’m going to keep this life.”  
  
Canton squeezed her hand back. He couldn’t believe it. Maybe the Doctor got it wrong. He didn’t exactly say _when_ she was going to leave... maybe he didn’t really know.   
  
Melody frowned. “What’s that?”   
  
“What’s what?”   
  
“What’s that on your wrist?”   
  
Canton looked down to where their hands were clasped on the table. There was a black mark on his arm. He frowned at it. “I have no idea,” he said, though it tickled something in his memory. It bothered him, so he tried to find a new subject. “You still have that boy you were stalking?”   
  
“Not stalking,” Melody chuckled. “Seducing. And no.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“I succeeded too fast. I mean, I’m all for recreational sex,” she said, standing up to head back to the kitchen nook. “But I’d prefer to be asked! He literally took his clothes off the moment we got in the door — we hadn’t even kissed yet.”   
  
Canton laughed. “I’ve had dates like that. So what did you tell him?”  
  
“Only —” Melody panted, “four inches, darling? I know — women — who can do better than that!”   
  
He was suddenly standing, and Melody seemed to be behind him. Canton looked over at her. She was holding a chair in her hand and there was a broken vase on the floor. She was out of breath. He felt a little tired too, come to think of it. And there were now six more marks on his arm. The marker was in his hand.   
  
Tally marks. The Doctor. River Song. Canton looked down at his hand.   
  
Pulsing, faded over the years, the tiny red light on his palm was blinking. Canton pushed it. The sounds of Melody cursing and breaking furniture was heard in the background as Canton’s own voice called out desperately. “They’ve found her! Get out of here! NOW!”  
  
Canton grabbed Melody’s arm, dragging her toward the door. “You heard the man,” he said.  
  
“Who found me?” Melody said nervously. “Who is it? Who—”  
  
The next thing Canton knew he was standing on the front steps of Melody’s building. “We have to run,” he said darkly. “Run now!”   
  
Melody stood very still. “Don’t worry about it any more,” she said quietly.  
  
Canton grabbed her shoulders and stared into her eyes. They were wide and panicked, like a little girl. He could still remember that eerie voice over the phone, running from the spaceman. “I know you can’t remember them,” he said. “I can’t either. But they want you, and you need to run.”   
  
“I know,” she said evenly.   
  
“Then come _on!_ ” He grabbed her arm and pulled her down the street.  
  
She was strangely slow behind him. “It’s no good....” she panted.  
  
“Kill them all on sight!” he said suddenly, for reasons he couldn’t really remember, but the words seemed familiar. “I think there’s too many of them.” He looked down at his arm. There were over twenty marks there now. Canton looked back and froze. “Oh, God!”   
  
Melody had a butcher knife in one hand dripping with something that wasn’t exactly blood. But what was pouring from the wound in her side was definitely crimson. And it was gushing.   
  
Canton caught her and pulled her away, his heart beating wildly. “Hey, are you okay?” a man on the street asked. Then he looked over their shoulders. “Kill them all on sight!” he said fiercely, and grabbed the knife out of Melody’s hand. Several people started charging the streets behind them.   
  
“Don’t look back,” Canton said.   
  
“No fear,” she muttered.   
  
Canton waved down a passing taxi.   
  
The next thing he remembered he was sitting in the taxi, and the taxi driver noticed a smudge and a crack on his windscreen which he swore hadn’t been there a minute ago. As the taxi driver cursed, Canton turned to his daughter.   
  
Her entire side was hemorrhaging blood. Canton’s stomach clenched and he fought back tears. “Just hang on, DeeDee, I’ll get you to a hospital.”  
  
She grunted. “No good. Just get me somewhere quiet.”   
  
“DeeDee, you’ll die!”   
  
“If you take me to a hospital, they’ll kill me!” she moaned back at him. “Just let me out. Here!” She pulled a wad of bloody cash from her pocket and threw it at the taxi driver. She staggered from the taxi and down a dark alley. “Another alley,” she groaned. “Always these damned New York alleyways!”  
  
Canton supported her, her blood staining his suit. “Dee, that’s too much blood.”   
  
“I know,” Melody grunted. “They got my liver. Oh, God, why does it always have to hurt so damn much?” She staggered against the wall, her fingers gauging scratches in the paint on the cinder blocks. “God damn liars! It’s easy, they said! Just die and regenerate. It’ll be easy! Ugh!”   
  
“Who said?”   
  
Melody looked up at him. “I can’t remember!” she laughed. “Oh, ha! Here it comes!”   
  
“DeeDee!”   
  
“Tonton, you better stand back. This can be a little — ow!” Melody pushed him away, knocking him into a trash can. He fell over, bruised and horrified. When he looked up, Melody was glowing with a swirling, burning golden light.   
  
“What’s happening?”   
  
“This is it!” Melody said, doubled over with pain. Then she seemed to pause and looked up at him. “Tonton.” She gasped. “Guess I’d better say it. Last chance I’ll have before I’m reshuffled.” She paused and panted, fighting to form words. “I always wished I really was your daughter, you know. Yours, and Stephen’s.” She sobbed and staggered backwards. “Why couldn’t I have been your little girl?”   
  
“You were,” Canton called out. “You are! DeeDee...”  
  
“OhhHHHH!” Melody screamed and her arms thrust out. Streams of golden light burst from her, and Canton himself was knocked backwards by the blast. It roared with light, burned with light, as if life itself was pouring through that alleyway like the substance of the sun.   
  
And then, quite suddenly, it stopped. Canton picked himself up and ran to where Melody had been.   
  
Melody was no longer there. Standing in a pile of bloody clothes was a little girl about three. Her skin was dark as Stephen’s, and she stared at her tiny hands in dismay. “God damn it!” she shouted, the adult words sounding strange in her little girl voice. There was even a slight lisp. “Now I’ll have to go through puberty all over again!” She glared up at Canton. “So much for college. And I can’t get laid for years. Remind me never to think about being little when I’m regenerating.” She bent down and sorted through the clothing to see if there was something without too much blood on it. “Well, these are all a wash,” she said glumly. “Tonton, can I borrow your coat?”   
  
Canton staggered, and decided that the ground was probably a nice place to be. He sat down quickly before he no longer had any choice in the matter, and then pulled off his suit coat. He blinked as she peeled the bloody remains of Melody’s shirt off her tiny child’s body, used the cleaner spots to wipe the blood off, and then pulled the coat around her. “What I wouldn’t give for a t-shirt!” she muttered.   
  
Canton stared, his jaw clenched tight. Finally, quite calmly, he thought, he asked, “What exactly just happened?”   
  
The little girl looked at him. “I died.” She seemed rather annoyed about it. She looked down at her tiny arms and legs. “Everything changes. I hope my personality doesn’t go too haywire. I know my prefrontal lobe isn’t attached yet, my thinking is muddy. Hope my hand-eye coordination is still the same. I don’t think I could stand it if I wasn’t still a good shot.”  
  
Canton stared at her. God, she looked like Stephen. Except there was something about the eyes... they looked like his mother’s. Then he remembered, that meant they looked like his own. Somehow, he had no idea how, this little girl appeared the biological child of both of them. “DeeDee?” he asked.   
  
“Of course,” she said. She took a step and staggered. She sighed, golden light misting from her breath. It went on for some time, until she looked like a dragon breathing fire. “Wow,” she said when it was done. “That’s a lot of matter I’m dissipating.” She sounded tired. “Canton, I hate to ask this, but could you pick me up? I’m feeling... a little weepy....” Two tears coursed down her cheeks. “I think the inhibition section of my brain hasn’t been formed yet... I don’t know how old I’m s’posed to be. Augghh, I’m hating this already!” She tottered, and Canton caught her instinctually, pulling her into his lap. “How old do I look?”  
  
“About three.”  
  
She swore, and he wanted to tell her little girls didn’t use such language. But she was Melody, and Melody wasn’t a little girl. She was so different....   
  
Something the Doctor had said tickled in Canton’s memory. When he’d said Melody was too young to have been the girl in the space suit. “She changed. She does that,” he muttered.   
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You’ve died before.”   
  
“The night before I met you, yeah,” Melody said. “I always though that was how you found me.” She frowned. “How did you find me?” She’d never asked that before. She was pretty young at the time, and after so long it had just become normal.  
  
Canton shook his head. “You called the president, and the president called me. That’s all that matters. I did find you.” He stood up, her arms around his neck. “And I've got you now. We gotta get you home. Oh, Stephen’s gonna love this.” He wasn’t sure how facetious he was being.  
  
Melody shook her head. “What do you mean?”   
  
“Well, you can’t stay in New York as you are,” he said pragmatically. He hoisted her onto his hip and made sure she was firmly covered with the coat. It was the same impulse that made him casually say, “Like your wheels,” when confronted with dimensional transcendence and space/time travel. “We’ll come up with something. Think we can tell Stephen you had an illegitimate child? Don’t know how plausible that story would sound.”   
  
Melody shook her head at him. Her expression was more serious and weighty than any toddler’s eyes had any right to have. “Canton, you know it’s over,” she said quietly. “It has to be. I don’t know who they are, I just know I have to run from them. But they’ve found me. That means they found you.”  
  
Canton clutched her tightly and shook his head. “No. That’s wrong. I can’t let you go, not like this.” He was grasping at straws. He already knew she was right. They’d found her just today -- the day he’d come to see her. It was quite likely they’d followed him to her. He was the one endangering her now.   
  
He ran desperately through alternatives in his head. Changing his name, moving to Canada, running away.... None of them sounded like they’d work for long. A piece of paper fluttered picturesquely down from the building above. Canton wanted to cry. It looked just like he was feeling — falling down and down and down. He swallowed and moved toward the street, Melody’s tiny weight comforting in his arms. It had been so long since she’d been small enough to hold. He could see himself doing it all again — and gladly. He didn’t want to listen to the voice in his head that told him she was right. It sounded like the Doctor’s.   
  
“I can take care of myself, Tonton,” Melody said gently. “You know I can.”   
  
“Not like this you can’t!” Another scrap of paper was caught by the wind and fluttered through the alley, brushing against his face. He batted it away angrily.   
  
“Canton, I have to go. I have to run! Farther than I’ve ever run before, to where they won’t be looking for me.”She touched his face and made him look at her. Her tiny fingers were like hot points of fire on his cheek. “Please. I have to go. You have to let me.”   
  
He was trembling, his jaw clenched, itching to shout at her, tell her it was impossible. An hour ago it had seemed so easy. He’d been so ready. But now....   
  
Melody’s fingers brushed the tears from his eyes. “I need you to help me now, Canton. I can’t get there on my own.” He couldn’t answer. He just stared at her, that face that looked so much like Stephen’s, so much like his. “There’s no way out of this,” Melody said gently.   
  
“There’s always a way out!” he said, but the words choked him.  
  
“There is if you help me.”   
  
For a long moment he stood there, at war with himself. The answer was already yes, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it.   
  
Another piece of paper answered for him, this time wadded into a ball and wrapped around a small pebble. It hit Canton square in the forehead. “Ow! What the...?” He looked up, and thought he caught a movement up above him. Was that the flash of a coattail?   
  
He set Melody down and picked up the piece of paper, unwrapping it. It had a phone number on it. “Call. Tell Melody she’s a friend of yours. X.”   
  
Canton closed his eyes. This was not fair.  
  
“What is that?”   
  
“Garbage,” he snapped. “Some idiot throwing garbage at us.” Melody looked suspicious, but said nothing. He shoved the paper into his pocket and picked her up again. “I’ll help you,” he said.   
  
Melody didn’t respond. He thought she knew that if she said anything, he’d start to cry in earnest.   
  
He only gave himself a day. He went nowhere near Melody’s apartment, so they wouldn’t see her with him and know what she looked like. But he took her around New York. He bought her a new wardrobe to fit her small frame — some of her tastes had changed, he was surprised to see. He took her to the Quilted Giraffe for lunch, and everyone commented on what a well behaved little girl he had. “You must be very proud,” said several people — no one even commented on the mixed heritage. Her face looked so much like his, they all assumed she was his daughter.   
  
“I am proud,” Canton said, fighting back tears. “I was proud from the first day.”   
  
Finally he checked into a hotel, using cash so his name wouldn’t be attached to it. Melody fell asleep almost immediately. She’d had a very hard day. Dying seemed to take it out of you. It wasn’t until she was firmly asleep — looking very tiny and vulnerable in the queen sized bed — that Canton called the number on the paper.


	6. She Does That

  
The tiny woman arrived at the hotel lobby the next morning. She was glamorous and professional, her pantsuit of a smooth brown, with pink highlights. Canton knew it had to be her before she’d spotted them. There was something distant in her eyes — something he thought he recognized from Amy and Rory. Those were the eyes of someone who had touched the stars. “Who is she?” Melody asked.   
  
“I told you,” Canton said stiffly. “She’s a friend of a friend. She’ll make sure you’re safe.”   
  
The woman caught his eye and smiled like city lights coming on. “Hello. Mr Delaware, yes? And this must be Melody. It’s very nice to meet you.” She held her hand out formally to the little girl, and Melody took it, but pretended to be shy and not very good at talking yet. “My name is Sarah Jane Smith, and I was told to take excellent care of you on your trip to England. I’m a journalist. Do you know what that means? It means I look at things happening all over the world, and then I write stories about it, like little books. Well, I was here in America writing a story, but I live in England, so I’ll be able to take you with me.”   
  
If Melody had actually been three, it wouldn’t have been degrading at all, but Canton found himself burning with annoyance. “Just talk normally to her,” he said stiffly. “She’s clever.”   
  
The lovely British woman nodded and looked up, leaving Melody out of earshot on the couch. “Is there anything I need to know?” she asked in a low voice. “Allergies? Potty training?”  
  
“She knows how to use the toilet,” Canton snapped.   
  
The woman frowned. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m _fine._ ”   
  
Sarah Jane Smith glanced over at Melody and then pulled Canton a little further away, turning from her. “Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m just the courier. I got a call out of the blue from the Brigadier General, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce asking me could I please take a detour from my trip back from slogging through blood in Nicaragua to take this child back to England and set her up in a foster home. I’m no social worker, I’m doing a favor for a very powerful friend. I’ve got a Goddamn Pulitzer, and I don’t need your attitude!”  
  
Canton swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you must be trustworthy, or he wouldn’t have told me to call.” He glanced back at Melody, who was riffling through Sarah Jane’s purse. He doubted Sarah Jane even knew it wasn’t still in her shoulder bag. His incorrigible DeeDee. “The thing is, I love that little girl.”  
  
“Then why don’t you keep her?” Sarah Jane asked reasonably.   
  
Canton broke. “I would if I could,” he breathed, fighting back the tears. He sucked in his breath through his teeth and snatched his handkerchief out of his pocket.  
  
Sarah Jane smiled at him sadly. Whatever else, he knew she understood. “Yeah. We can’t always keep those we love.” She squeezed his shoulder with one hand. “Tough luck. I’ll let you know where she is.”   
  
“Thanks,” he said. He went back and picked Melody up. Sarah Jane grabbed Melody’s suitcase and took it back to the airport limo that was waiting. Sarah Jane shook Canton’s hand and went into the limo, giving him one last moment alone with Melody.   
  
“She’ll get you to England,” Canton said to her. “What you do there is up to you. If you find them....”   
  
Melody grinned ruefully, gesturing at her tiny body. “Hey. At least we’d have something in common now.”  
  
Canton tried to laugh, but it was strained. “Now you have to promise me....” He couldn’t stop himself. He squeezed her tightly, and she squeezed him back. Her tiny little arms were strong enough to bruise his shoulders, but he didn’t care. “Promise me to take care of yourself.”   
  
“I always do,” Melody said.   
  
“And write to your old dads some times,” Canton said. “I’ll tell Stephen you transferred to Cambridge or something.” It would be the first time he’d ever directly lied to Stephen. Ah well.   
  
“Will do.” She sighed. “Now I get to spend hours talking baby talk to some nitwit.”   
  
“Ask her to read you her latest story,” he said. “She’ll probably think you can’t understand it, but I don’t think she’s as dumb as all that. We have a close mutual friend — and he has good taste in women.”   
  
Melody kissed his cheek, and Canton opened the limo door and let her climb in. “Bye, DeeDee.”   
  
“Bye bye, Tonton,” she said with a sad smile.   
  
He kissed her forehead, and then made himself close the door.   
  
The limo drove off, taking half his heart with him.   
  
A moment later a hand on his shoulder made him stagger in his grief. The Doctor caught his arm, supporting him. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Canton complained. He glared up at him. “That’s not how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be strong, and ready!”   
  
“She is strong. She is ready.”   
  
“She’s a little girl.”  
  
“She’ll always be a little girl to you.”   
  
He glared at him. “ _That,_ ” he shouted, pointing down the empty street after the limo, “is not fair!”   
  
There was a long silence. “No,” the Doctor said finally. “It’s not. But if it gives you any comfort, the Domestic Partnership law just went through in Berkley.” He shrugged. “Stephen’s really excited.”  
  
“I think I hate you.”  
  
“You’re not alone,” the Doctor said evenly. “Why do you think they kidnapped her in the first place? She’s supposed to kill me.”  
  
Things snapped into place in Canton’s head. Melody’s nightmares and her constant battle to stop wanting to kill things and her obsessing over the tiniest memories of the Doctor. Her strength. Her intelligence. Everything about her. It made perfect sense. “Will she do it?”   
  
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Against her will. And you’ll be there to see it. But it doesn’t bother me.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“Because some things have their time. Just like this was the day you had to let her go.”   
  
Canton sighed and leaned against the wall of the hotel. He could hardly hold himself up. “She looked like Stephen,” he said. “She looked like our child.”   
  
“She was your child. In her heart. It’s because she loved you,” the Doctor said gently. “Emotion influences the regeneration.”   
  
“Regeneration,” Canton muttered. “River didn’t look like that. Meaning she’s going to die again, isn’t she. How?”  
  
“She gets shot by Hitler.”  
  
A laugh burst out of Canton’s mouth. “She does nothing by halves, does she?”   
  
“No. But she’ll be fine. She does find Amy and Rory, and you saw them; they’re great friends.”   
  
“And what about us? Stephen and me?”  
  
“She keeps in touch. Mostly in writing, I’m afraid.”   
  
Canton took a deep breath. “I suppose that will have to do, won’t it.”   
  
The Doctor shrugged. “We only get to keep our children for so long.”  
  
Canton heard the sadness in his voice. “Have you lost children, Doctor?”   
  
The Doctor said nothing, but the darkness in his eyes was answer enough. Canton almost forgave him in that moment. Almost. “You had fifteen years,” the Doctor said. “A lifetime, from start to finish. I’ve had lives that didn’t last half so long. Fifteen years as Melody Delaware. Her next life belongs to the Ponds. But that life belonged to you.”   
  
“No it didn’t,” Canton said quietly. “Our lives belonged to _her._ She took them over. She’ll never give them back.”   
  
The Doctor squeezed his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “She does that.” 


	7. Epilogue

  
Canton drove away from Lake Silencio with the scent of smoke still in his nose. He wasn’t sure exactly how much time he had left. Not much if the sweat on his brow was any indication. His arm hurt. This wasn’t his first heart attack in the last five years. But he knew it was going to be his last.   
  
He pulled the truck over and got out. The night sky over Utah was brilliant with stars. He wrapped himself in a wool blanket he kept in the truck and climbed up into the truck bed. It was as good a place as any. He was glad he’d gotten to see everything come full circle. At least he had lasted that long. And he’d seen River one last time. He’d missed her — the last time he’d seen her had been the day Stephen died. She’d avoided the funeral (he didn’t blame her. He wished he could have avoided it himself) but she’d been there for Stephen at the end. By that time the disease had taken his vision, so it hadn’t been hard to convince Stephen that River was still DeeDee.  
  
Canton had gotten to see her today. Had a chance to say that goodbye. That was all that mattered.  
  
A roaring in Canton’s ears told him his time was nearly up. He kept his eyes fixed on the stars, refusing to give in to fear. Then the roaring stopped, and a brash British voice said, “We really shouldn’t be here, you know. It’s way too close to the lake, that’s a really delicate point, we’re risking all kinds of universal upheavals and—”  
  
“Shut up!” said another familiar voice. The bed of the truck moved as someone climbed up beside him. “Hey, Canton,” River said, taking hold of his hand. “I’m here.”   
  
“Dee...”   
  
“Shh. It’s all been said.” His daughter lifted his head and cradled it in her lap, holding his hand tightly. The tears in her eyes were not forced as she bent down to kiss his forehead. “Love you. Sleep tight, now, Tonton.”   
  
Canton let his eyes search until he spied the Doctor by the side of the truck. “Thank you,” he whispered.  
  
The Doctor nodded briefly. “Thank you,” he replied soberly.   
  
Melody’s arms were very warm, and the stars reflected in her eyes were so bright. So very bright. So bright he thought they might blind him. So he let his eyes close. Time to let go.  
  
Canton Everett Delaware III breathed his last breath on the road to Lake Silencio, Utah, April 22, 2011. That last breath passed in a contented sigh. 


End file.
